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Powerbook 170 questions
- Thread starter Unknown_K
- Start date
Got that 145B motherboard in today and stuck it in my machine. Results are it boots with the battery removed, contrast works, 40MB internal SCSI HD works. I taped over the leads to the shorted battery so I can boot with it installed. Bad part is the floppy drive doesn't seem to want to read or format anything (I can hear it working and it ejects the disks pretty good, cleaning disks didn't help). Another thing is once you pop in a floppy the machine starts to have a buzzing noise that doesn't go away when the floppy is ejected.
hmmm.. strange... i never had an issue with the floppy disk. as i never had a HDD to test it, i had to boot it up off of floppies and it worked great. My guess there is a drive fault somewhere? not sure.
I purchased a junker 140 off of ebay for parts. Ended up with a working floppy drive and a 6MB RAM expansion (so I now have 8MB max RAM). Also got the back cover plastic I was missing so I have a 100% complete machine now. My only issue is the machine freezes up once in a while and when I power it off and on I get the death chimes. Any idea what would cause that?
Possibly a bad RAM Expansion board? Is it when you do a lot of work or run several apps/one large app at once?
The death chime could possibly be a residual effect of hitting a bad memory location and when you restart it notes the error?
I am not sure what you could use to check the RAM, but try booting it, making a RAM Disk using as much memory as possible and copy files to try to take up that whole RAM Disk. if it fails in the middle of the copy/freezes it's possible you have a bad RAM Expansion board.
It's a possibility but I ran into that with a 3400c 64MB board. It was like at the last 1MB of the area and found it buy creating a RAM Disk and copied all the way up.
TechTool Lite confirmed it was bad so I had to get a replacement.
Too bad it's on it's way out though. Something in the video circuitry is going and it has artifacts in it. It will ghost images are artificact when running applications. no matter the res/colors. lower bit color schemes help, but I think the VRAM is bad on it.
Either way, I would try that method, or try to get an OS on it that can do virtual memory, create as much virtual memory as possible, use a RAM disk that would cause your system to use the VM space for the system swap, then fill up the RAM disk. that will allow you to find it easily.
The death chime could possibly be a residual effect of hitting a bad memory location and when you restart it notes the error?
I am not sure what you could use to check the RAM, but try booting it, making a RAM Disk using as much memory as possible and copy files to try to take up that whole RAM Disk. if it fails in the middle of the copy/freezes it's possible you have a bad RAM Expansion board.
It's a possibility but I ran into that with a 3400c 64MB board. It was like at the last 1MB of the area and found it buy creating a RAM Disk and copied all the way up.
TechTool Lite confirmed it was bad so I had to get a replacement.
Too bad it's on it's way out though. Something in the video circuitry is going and it has artifacts in it. It will ghost images are artificact when running applications. no matter the res/colors. lower bit color schemes help, but I think the VRAM is bad on it.
Either way, I would try that method, or try to get an OS on it that can do virtual memory, create as much virtual memory as possible, use a RAM disk that would cause your system to use the VM space for the system swap, then fill up the RAM disk. that will allow you to find it easily.
The source of that info is here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA32393
But the fact is that the M5140 cannot be the "first AC adapter" for Apple portables, since the first Apple portable was not the PowerBook 100. The first portable was the Macintosh Portable. But what is the model number for the Macintosh Portable's AC adapter?
Also, it is said that the PowerBook 100's AC Adapter works to boot the Macintosh Portable even if the Portable's battery is dead. However, does anyone know if that adapter is the original model M5140 or the replacement adapter, model M4662 (or both)?
And what would happen if the M5652 were connected to the Macintosh Portable? Would it fry the board? Apple's article says the M5652 would damage the PowerBook 100.
With regard to the Mac Portable, yes the 9v battery has been checked. And since this thread is focused on the PowerBook 170, I started a new thread about the Mac Portable woes:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=17078&start=0
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=17078&start=0
You don't need to working battery to get any Powerbook 100 series working. A good power adapter is enough, 2 Amps for the Black and White models, the 3 Amps version for the 165c and 180c.
You actually need to remove the old battery as they are often shorted and prevent your powerbook from turning on. These can even kill you power adapter too as the fuse in the battery charging circuit on the logic board is rated higher than the output of your power supply.
Nico
